The embodied nature of students’ engagement and participation during a total physical response activity

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study examines the embodied nature of students’ engagement and participation during a total physical response activity (TPR) in a beginning ESL classroom. A video excerpt is transcribed. Using multimodal conversation analysis, we examine students’ embodied actions following the teacher’s demonstrations for the verb ‘pick up’, following the teacher’s commands for the verbs ‘pick up’ and ‘drop’, and when the teacher is writing on the board. We found the followings: a) even when students are engaged and participate, they display various levels of engagement and participation, b) students’ engagement and participation at any particular moment can be characterised into one of the four quadrants in Jacknick’s (2021) model, namely engaged participation, engaged non-participation, disengaged non-participation, and disengaged participation, and c) students’ engagement and participation vary not only across students but also within individual students. The study sheds light on the embodied nature of students’ engagement and participation from a multimodal multi-activity perspective, and contributes to the still under-investigated research of students’ embodied engagement and participation in teacher-centred interaction.